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Saturday, 28 December 2013

I hope you have all had a magical Christmas and are now looking forward to a wonderful New Year! I was not going to post this project for reasons I will explain in a moment. Mr Mojo took off on his holidays as soon as he knew I broke my hip and sadly, he has not been back much at all since! The dilemma was, how do I create Christmas cards for family and friends without any inspiration.....

And along came Mr Holtz and his fabulous skate die which I had just purchased. He posted THIS and I was inspired! I did a tag card shamelessly copying his design to see if using his techniques would give me some ideas and it did. Off I went making lots of cards and gift tags using the skate die (and this time using my own ideas!). But they have all been given away to family and friends and I did not want to end the year without doing one more post...... so all I have left is this tag card and my leather look skate which I have already blogged.

The only differences between my tag and Tim's is the embossing folder I used and I added one of Tim's beautiful idea-ology ice skates and a brown ribbon bow at the top. For details on the 'how to' please follow the link to Tim's blog.

This really is the most wonderful time of year, when family and friends come together to share the joy of Christmas and look forward to a new year.

Many people are showing their favourite makes for 2013 and what better way to round off the year. I am just going to show you one, something that I am totally happy with (we are our own worst critics aren't we?), my Halloween Configurations box. I followed the tutorial by the very talented Richele Christensen, it was an absolute delight to make and I won the most fantastic prize from Richele of guess what? - a bumper bundle of Tim Holtz goodies so I have plenty to play with next year.......... I am linking this up with Jennie the Artistic Stamper HERE who is asking us to show our favourite piece from this year. You can find my original piece here.

I have a lot to thank Tim Holtz for and long may it continue, despite it making me rather poor most months!And finally, it would take me forever to thank people for their kindness this year, so I just want to saya very big thank you to all my friends and followers who were kind enough to visit my blog and leave comments, those who sent me well wishes, beautiful cards, wonderful gifts and most of all, those who shared friendship. I am truly thankful for each and every one of you so THANK YOU!

I wish you and yours all the very best for 2014 and hope that it is happy and healthy and that you get lots of time to create your own forms of art. Big hugs, Anne xx

Tuesday, 17 December 2013

Tim's tag for December is, I think, my most favourite one this year. I cannot think of a better marriage than Tim's Frosted Film and Wendy Vecchi's Clearly for Art! This tag was such fun and the resulting flower is just stunning. To see Tim's original you can go HERE.

Without further ado, here is my effort:

I actually loved Tim's tag so much that I didn't want to do anything different, although sadly, I do not yet have the sentiment stamp that Tim used and I did improvise by using a Stampendous stamp. Other than that I followed Tim's tutorial exactly. If you want further details then please have a look at Tim's link above.

Here is a close up of the gorgeous flower and you can just see a hint of the stencilling I did in the background, using Tim's star stencil.

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And now for something a little different. I think you know how much I love using Tim's new skate die, I have made lots of cards with it this year and will never tire of using it. My lovely blog friend Angela (if you have not looked at her blog before, I hope you will, she is a very talented lady) put a note on my blog telling me of some Dutch friends she has, who have a very old pair of brown leather skates. Well that got 'the little grey cells' awakened and then they went into overdrive! I don't have any leather but I do have a pack of Tim's Kraft Glassine so I did some experimenting and this is the result (click on the photos for a closer look):

I did a couple of attempts which did not work, the Kraft Glassine on it's own is not strong enough to put laces through so I used some double sided adhesive sheets. I screwed up and crumpled up the Glassine, put some double sided adhesive sheets on the back and then attached this to some Kraft card stock and bingo - it was strong enough to take the laces.

I used a white base card, matted and layered with some more Kraft card. The top layer is some patterned paper from my stash and I randomly stencilled over the top with Tim's Dot Fade stencil. I added the Merry Christmas from the Simple Sayings stamp set and some greenery in the corner from the Festive Greenery strip die.

To make the heel and the blade of the skate I did this on white card, coloured the heel with Wendy Vecchi Potting Soil Archival ink (my current favourite) and covered the blade with Treasure Gold in Pewter.

To age the faux leather of the skates I took a piece of cut and dry foam and randomly brushed Potting Soil Archival ink over the skate. I am really pleased with the result, in real life it does look like aged leather.

Thank you for looking and in the event that I do not post again before Christmas, I would like to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a very happy and healthy New Year! Thank you all for being such wonderful and caring and supportive blog friends. Big hugs, Anne xxx

Sunday, 15 December 2013

This month, over at Our Creative Corner, the lovely Laura has chosen the challenge theme which is 'A Very Vintage Christmas'. In Laura's own words:

For this challenge we are abandoning traditional Christmas colours and are giving Christmas a Vintage tone. No reds, no greens, just neutrals.

Quite the challenge for me, I don't do either neutral or vintage very well but once I started I actually loved it! I was able to use my new (and current favourite) ice skate die by Tim Holtz to make a Christmas card. I liked it so much I made a few. For a closer view just click on the photos.

The base is a 6" x 6" square white card which I coloured with Tea Dye Distress Ink. I then matted two layers, one in Frayed Burlap core'dinations card and one in a rustic map design paper from my stash. The edges were roughed up and coloured with Tea Dye DI. I added some Frantage to the bottom corner to give the appearance of snow or ice. The sentiment is from Tim's Seasonal chit chat stickers, part of a huge parcel of Tim goodies that I won from Richele Christensen for my Halloween Configurations Box. She knows me well and my obsession with Mr Holtz's products, it seems!

I inked the edges of the skates to give them a vintage feel. The beauty of this skate die is that it has little holes in it where you can actually add laces. The laces are made from some twine and the blades have been coloured using Treasure Gold in Pewter. I dabbed this on with a paint brush, again to give a mottled and aged appearance.

At the top I added some vintage ribbon which was coloured quite randomly with Tea Dye DI and the fabulous rusty jingle bells.

We would love you to join in the challenge at Our Creative Corner, there is still time, the challenge closes on 28 December 2013. Please have a look over HERE for full details of the challenge. I hope you will go over here and visit to see what my other teamies have made - I promise you will not be disappointed!

I would like to say a huge thank you to my long standing followers and also to my new ones, it is so lovely to have you along on my creative journey. I really do appreciate all of you! As some of you know I have recently been a bit indisposed and Mr Mojo went on his holidays around the same time, but I hope to get back to creating and blogging a little more often in the new year. I will be back soon though with my Tim Tag for December, I could not end the year without completing the last one. Hope to see you then.

Edited: I intended to link this up to Country View Crafts challenge blog where the theme is Bah Humbug and there is a fabulous prize of £20 to spend in the shop or a place on Brenda Brown's workshop!